How to add screen tracking/timings in Firebase Analytics?

Question

I see there is an update in the last android sdk and they show, they log the parameter on every event is logged, but how can I add screen tracking?

There is a user engagement tab in the dashboard, but that does not expand to give some more insights.

However, I see messages like this while switching activities:

D/FA: Logging event (FE): _e, Bundle[{_o=auto, _et=4807, _sc=MainActivity, _si=-3289793799694080660}]

What does that mean? They are tracking activities? If yes, how can we see timings? If no, how can we track activity/screen timings with the help of custom events (this is possible, right?) ?

Solution

Automatic screen tracking was added in the Android and iOS SDKs in October of 2016. These events are recorded automatically when the library detects that you've changed Activities / ViewControllers.

That said, there might be times when you want to record your own screen tracking (a GameKit game for instance, tends to stay on a single ViewController and changes "screens" through new GameKit scenes), so you can manually make a call to setScreenName if you want to track screens manually.

Right now, this screen reporting manifests itself on the Dashboard of the Firebase Analytics console in the "User Engagement" section -- you can break down your user engagement by screen name or screen class to see how long people spend on each screen. You can also get this report by looking at the specific screen_view event in the console.

If you need more specific information than that, you'll probably need to start exporting your Google Analytics for Firebase data to BigQuery and run your queries there.